It has taken me longer than in previous weeks just to sit down to write this post. I have been greatly moved and have seen new light. My understanding is being opened more and more and it is glorious.

As I am thinking about the restoration of the building where we meet as a church and sometimes catch myself wondering how will it be possible, I am encouraged to know that I don’t have to know. It is enough to know that God knows. And God has shown me that my request is nothing that He has not heard and answered many times before but He has graciously taken me back to the first time.

In part 7 of the Master key 2. Haanel says “Make the pattern clear and make it beautiful; do not be afraid, make it grand; remember that no limitation can be placed upon you by any one but yourself; you are not limited as to cost or material; draw on the infinite for your supply, construct it in your imagination; it will have to be THERE before it will ever appear anywhere else. 3. Make the image clear and clean cut, hold it firmly in the mind and you will gradually and constantly bring the image nearer to you. You can be what you will to be.

Moses was taken up in the Spirit when he went on the mountain with God. He came down with Ten Commandments written on Stone Tablets but also with a pattern in his mind to build a dwelling place for God that the Israelites would be able to move with them as they travelled. When God moved they picked up the tabernacle, a complicated operation fully describes by Moses, and each person had their part to play as the whole community of several million people moved with Him, following His presence signified by a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day.

I had always thought that Moses had seen an actual tabernacle in Heaven and the one he made in the wilderness was copy of it. I am not inclined to believe that it was such a mental image in the mind of Moses as Haanel describes: beautiful and grand, without limitation as to cost or material. You can read how a bunch of refugees wandering around the wilderness came up with enough wood and linen, silver and gold and every other thing needed to manifest the vision and even how people were taught skills beyond human capability to put it all together in the book of Exodus.

So if Moses saw it so clearly in his imagination and the clarity of it brought about its perfect physical manifestation it must be the pattern given to us by God through scripture to manifest the calling on our lives. The Psalmist says if we delight in Him He will give us the desires of our hearts and I have always understood, mentally and experientially that meant He put the desire there in the first place.

The apostle John in his 1st Epistle wrote “…we are confident that He hears us whenever we ask for anything that pleases Him.15 And since we know He hears us when we make our requests, we also know that he will give us what we ask for.

There are two things to note here and Haanel points both of them out. 1. Our will must be in line with the divine will…and…2. it does not happen by magic…generous people brought the materials that God had provided and willing people did the work as God gave the ability.

So Moses had the idea by inspiration, He visualised it until he could see it in every detail and like John says he already had it at that point though it was not yet visible to the physical eyes. Maybe people close to Moses thought he had flipped as he described it to them in great detail but he was not fazed.

Faith was the substance of the very thing for which Moses held a sure and certain hope.

Since every single item in the tabernacle has its purpose and each tells a prophetic story of the coming Christ it seems even God Himself is practicing what He taught Moses and is teaching us. He planned from the beginning that all those who believed in the redeeming power of the Only Begotten Son of God would themselves become the tabernacle of God on earth. Some people once said to Jesus “We want to perform God’s works, too. What should we do?” His reply is quite surprising. there was no difficult task to perform, no hoops to jump through. Jesus simply told them, “This is the only work God wants from you: Believe in the one he has sent.” John 6:28

The pin fell out of my watch yesterday and the watch dropped off my wrist. I saved the watch but I couldn’t find the pin and it turns out that it’s not so easy to replace. I will persevere though, I love that watch because it has significant meaning for me. It’s a Raymond Weil bought in Cyprus in the year I turned 50 but more importantly it marks the time my oldest daughter went over there to work and the first of our 8 children left the nest.

Why bother with a story like that in week 6 of the Master Key experience? Well I think it is pretty significant actually and I have long since stopped putting these little things down to coincidence. This is the week we talked about not running our lives by the clock but by the compass. The clock is relentless and unforgiving and time is definitely an important measure but have you ever noticed how work has a habit of expending into and then beyond the time allocated to it. Have you noticed that the time we think a task will take is almost always an underestimation. Well in this last few weeks, using the methods taught in the course I have been getting so much more done and still have had time to sit and think.

Someone said, “Think? Whats all that about? I don’t have time to just sit and do nothing, thinking, dreaming more like.”

And believe me, I do know where he was coming from, life can be such a rush,

Remember the words of Cliffs old song; Time Goes By Sitting on a log, watch the world go by Fat old frog thinking: My oh my Funny thing that human race Rush here, rush there, get no place

I think the fat old frog was probably right… we all have this amazing capacity to sit quietly and receive from out of our own memories, experiences, previously acquired knowledge, new combinations, new uses and what seems like good ideas. But there is a limit to that isn’t there. It has to be in there to be able to come out. We can go beyond that, we can read new material, everything is written down somewhere, the second wisest man who ever lived says there is nothing new under the sun. But I will say if a poor uneducated man were to try and read some great piece of literature from one of the great books for instance he would not gain anything from it. His capacity to lean is governed by what he already knows. His capacity to learn is limited.

But if we can sit quietly, and reverently, David the King put it this way, “Be still, and know that I am God”. Things from outside of our current clan be revealed to us. We pick up most of what we know through our 5 senses, sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell, and we would not want to live without them would we, though many do and perhaps more fully than those of us who have it all. But there is another sense in which we can commune with God, in this place we know things that we have not learned. They are revealed to us by His grace. I have known this for many years but my ‘use’ of it has been sporadic because I have only seen it as a mystery. I was happy with mystery but not complete. When Jesus said “Out of your belly shall flow rivers of living water” I thought I knew what he meant. When He said “I AM the light of the world” and later “You are the light of the world”, and, “Let your light shine before men”. I just thought He meant live a good life as far as you can and set a good example.

What I missed is when He said “I and My Father are one” and “if I go to my Father I will come and we will make our home in you” that he was saying all the fullness of heaven will be available to the earth though you. Not just through me. Jesus had the Spirit without measure. It seems that I have it in the measure that I can “Believe in my heart”. What I have learned is the spirit lives and connects me to God… and through God to all people and in fact to all of creation because God is everywhere present, all knowing and all powerful.

But what does it mean… “Believe in your heart”? It was always a mystery…but now I know that the place I feel stress, the place I feel fear, the place I feel elation, somewhere right in the middle of my body…”out of your belly shall flow” there is an organ no-one seems to want to talk about. It is not mentioned in my version of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Its not the 24 volume World of Science I own. I looked at anatomy web sights that seem to be very authoritative and I searched and was told ‘no results were found’. The Solar Plexus seems to be a bit of a mystery and yet Charles Haanel wrote about it in the Master Key over 100 years ago in 1912. I have not the time or the knowledge as yet to explainMy Solar Plexus but now I know I have one and doors are opening.

The time is important…but I know I am an eternal being …so now I am moving according to the compass and not the clock. No more Rush here rush there get no place… I am definitely moving in the right direction, a direction that I have determined for myself.

Reading the second scroll from Og Mandino’s The Greatest Salesman in The World three times every day I am repeatedly telling myself: my heart, my Inner Man. “I will Greet each day with love in my heart.”

God is Love. Can I also say in agreement with Jesus. “I and my Father are one”?

How many people leave school and think that’s it. They think “I have finished that phase of life now its time to draw the line under it.” They get a job, work hard, set up home have a family and work though to retirement. They spend most of their evenings tired out watching one box before they finally put them in another box and nail the lid on. Box to box.

Well maybe it used to work that way but those days are well and truly gone. I was brought up in that old mindset and I guess like many of my old schoolmates I could have stayed there. But I have found there is something much more exciting, constant and continual learning and the application of that learning can bring rewards the old mindset could never have asked for or even imagined.

We educated our children at home…all 8 of them. When I say we I really mean my wife Steppy who worked such wonders with little resource. I am not sure al the children have quite grasped their advantage yet but they are doing very well for the main part. What the homeschooling did for them was teach them to be resourceful, to seek out the information they needed at the time they needed it and to build the habit into them of always wanting to satisfy that curiosity. I believe it taught them more than anything else to think for themselves. The girls especially will argue with the old dinosaur they think I am on all points. I feel a bit put out sometimes but I am glad deep down that they can make their own minds up about serious issues…and we don’t have to agree about everything to be in unity and love one another. Otherwise how would we ever make progress if someone didn’t disagree with the previously accepted norms.

Thats is what I have been getting out of the Master Key MMA. I am not taking on board the views of the authors we are reading without question, I am processing them and they are making clear the reason why some things I knew by faith can actually be shown to work on a scientific basis. For instance some of the things Jesus said were not clear to me but I would accept them simply because He said them…and that was enough for me…but I have discovered things in the course that have made it more than enough.

I have had several WOW moments during the last 5 weeks when I thought, do you know, Jesus said that really clearly in John’s Gospel in this chapter and such and such a verse, He said we could not understand it at that time but when the Holy Spirit comes He would lead us into all truth. I thought WOW! Jesus knew about all this science two thousand years ago. Then I realised, well actually He knew a long time before that…because He set it all up that way in the first place. Some things we learn through our five senses and our powers of deduction but when He the Holy Spirit comes He really does leads us into deeper truth, not by sense knowledge but by revelation.

35 years ago as a very raw 25 years old I started my first sales job. It was with an electric shower company called Instalow. They gave me three days in the classroom and then threw me out with a presenter and a curtain swatch. There were a few leads knocking about but they were not for the likes of me. It was a case of knocking on doors and drumming up some business of my own. Most of my fellow trainees were gone after a week and I was sorely tempted to throw in the towel myself but I had nowhere else to go and I always was a bit stubborn so I stuck around. I sold the odd shower mainly because it was a bit of a boom time and it just about kept me afloat.

Then a new National Sales Manager called Frank Sinclair and his partner the National Sales Trainer Pat Edrich rode into town. They had a plan, which is always a good start. They hired about 50 young kids straight out of school and fed them lots of excitement and the motivational stuff that Pat was clearly devoted to. I was instantly a senior sales person and I had to move fast to stay ahead and work loads of leads these young guys were producing. Pat had me saying “Do it now” 20 times whilst nodding vigorously and smiling. He had us saying things like.”If it is to be it’s up to me”. and “Every day in every way I get better and better”….and “I feel happy, I feel healthy, I feel terrific”. I had no idea why…I thought he was nuts but I was enjoying the ride and the excitement so I stayed and played the game. A few weeks later I sold 5 showers on one Friday in Northwich, Cheshire. All these years later I still have proud possession of all the certificates for 4,5,6,7,8+ sales in a week. I met my wife there too, she was one of the young canvassers, so it was a fun time that I remember fondly.

The problem was I never really understood what was going on. I didn’t get it. The stuff Pat was teaching was really deep and meaningful but I just thought it was fluff and excitement. I am still selling 35 years later and I have always earned a good living but now all the same materials are back in my life. Mark J is going through it all again in Master Keys MMA. Not similar stuff…word for word. It must have been what Pat had just discovered and was trying to teach us. If I had grasped this back then, if I had known what powerful, scientific information this really was I can only guess how different things might have been. I have nothing to complain about and don’t think I am complaining but I know if I had had more colours on my palette and appreciated what I was being given I could be a multi millionaire right now. I could have achieved so much more.

When I tell my 16 year old twin boys, they have not got enough colours on their palettes to appreciate the things I have learned by experience they just laugh…just like I did back then. In the Greatest Salesman in the World Og Mandino says “…experience teaches thoroughly yet her course of instruction devours men’s years so the value of her lessons diminishes with the time necessary to acquire her special wisdom.

What would I do to have those years again and the wisdom to know the power of thought. Even more what would I give to have my children learn from all my life of lessons and just pick up the batten. It seems everyone wants to re-invent the wheel. Maybe its just that the young people think their elders don’t understand that times have changed. They certainly have changed… but principles never change.

Hey everybody… we are only three weeks in to the Master Key program and I am already noticing some strange behavioural changes affecting me in every area.

I am getting things done too soon… I am not sure if I can cope, I am finding myself with time to spare and nothing to do in it.

You see I am a deadline person, I have always thrived on the last minute rush… I began my working life in Newspapers and then did 13 more years in publishing at Yellow Pages either in front line sales or first line management. All that taught me the excitement of working to deadlines.

It pervades everything…Even after 30 Years of preaching and many hundreds of sermons I rarely have one ready before midnight on the night before it’s due. To be honest I have liked it that way. You can’t believe the adrenalin rush as you step up to the platform having only finished the message a few hours earlier.

But what’s happening?…Mark J has had me saying “Do it Now” 25 times twice a day out loud. I have been writing on little cards… I promise to do stuff by the following Thursday or even Sunday and saying “I always keep my promises”, but in most cases I have done it by the next day. I was asked to write a script for our Melaleuca online presentation months ago…literally months, and I was keen to do it too, it was needed but somehow I just couldn’t chisel out the time…I wrote it down on October the 2nd…I promise to write the Melaleuca Script by Sunday the 9th of October…and ‘I always keep my promises’. I read it out loud 3 times each day.

No joke… I had done it by Tuesday…that’s a victory worth celebrating… but to be honest I don’t like it much and I am working on making it more exciting and adding emotion to it.

Ahhh…what am I thinking.

That’s what they made me do with my DMP. (thats my Definite Major Purpose) I followed the course instructions and wrote it down exactly the way I see it and sent it off by email. I couldn’t believe it when it came back after a few days with comments all over it…”sounds like a list”…”where is the emotion”…”how is Subby (that’s the subconscious mind) supposed to go to work on this” etc. etc.

I suppose I was a bit miffed but I got to work right away and changed it anyway…and then I changed it again…and again…and again.

I was limited to 400 words which I thought was too few but I decided to trust the process… and I am very competitive too so I got it bang on 400. I thought it was good, I was quite pleased with myself…but back it came anyway. Truth is, I would never have believed how much better I could make it with a little help from my friends and a bit more constructive thought on my part. I think I nearly have it now. Lo tengo ahora.

Well you would think that would be enough wouldn’t you…BUT NO…Now I feel compelled to go over and over my Melaleuca script making it better each time I do…and believe it or not I got up even earlier than normal on Sunday morning and went through my sermon again and I do reckon I improved it quite a lot. With a bit more thought I managed to say more, more powerfully and with less words in less time.

It is amazing but even after just one week of the Master Key Course…taking the time to sit and think…reading the materials and feeding the subconscious with good things…my whole demeanour has changed for the better.

It may be coincidence but sales have shot up. I don’t really believe in coincidence so I put it down to the change in my attitude that has been brought about by reading the first scroll in Og Mandino’s book “The Worlds Greatest Salesman” each day. Seven sales in a week and seven happy customers too so that’s very satisfying… quite apart from the commission. Honestly though… commission only matters when there is not enough. Once the pump is primed and the cash flow is regular, there is no pressure and selling is a delightful profession. Of all the thousands that I have seen fall by the wayside in my 35 years in the profession I just wish that some had stuck with it a few weeks longer. Over 20 years ago at Encyclopaedia Britannica we used to say “Keep them one more week, Teach them one more thing” EB has pretty much gone in book form of course, computer technology brought the end to an institution that was founded way back in 1768… but the principle remains…stay with it one more week… learn one more thing…and IMPLEMENT it.

Habit is the key word in that first scroll, isn’t it funny how when a message comes it seems to come from every angle… I have been thinking a lot about habits recently anyway. Les Brown, Darren Hardy are both people who have been talking about it on CD’s and books I have been reading. Les had been advocating reading 30 pages of a good book that will build me up spiritually or help in my profession. That has been something I have been trying to implement for a few weeks but although I read quite a lot and every day anyway trying to establish a firm habit and stretching myself to a 30 page commitment was not proving easy.

Og Mandino, together with the other reading required to stay current in the MasterKey Alliance has helped with that

Back to habit…I have been careful about my eating habits, replacing bad with good, since my 60th birthday at the end of Feb. (7 months) and I am delighted with the progress so far. Just replace ‘A Mars a Day’ with ‘An Apple a Day’ and see what that does for you in 6 months or a year. I didn’t actually eat a Mars a day of course but the equivalent useless calories in bread, cakes and biscuits doesn’t quite hit the conscience in the same way does it? Kind of sneaks up on you. Anyway 27lbs have melted away somewhere so check back in another 6/7 months to see how I am doing then.

Come to think about it…it might be nice for you to join me and I will let you know my secret.

Only joking…Actually I will let you know now…there is no secret…it is simply about replacing a destructive habit with a habit that serves you well, one day at a time. And just take one habit at a time too…most of us can manage that.

Today is September 26th 2016 and I am at the beginning of a journey along the road with my Master Keys Mastermind Alliance. This is my first blog post concerning this. The rest of the message is the first draft of my DMP or Definite Major Purpose. What will it look like when it is done is a question I often ask myself. This is the way I see it looking.

It is February 2021. I am entertaining my whole family for a week in Spain to celebrate my 65th birthday. These last 5 years have been a thrilling ride for me, my wife and so many associates who have enjoyed all we have achieved together.

My working time these days is divided about equally between my Christian service and my Melaleuca Network Marketing Business.

As Senior Pastor at Hindley Green Family Church I have responsibility for a paid staff of 7 plus numerous volunteers. I have overall responsibility for the whole congregation of between 450 and 500 people. The leadership structure starts with connect groups of around 8-15 people: they meet in homes around the district. Trained leaders have responsibility for several groups which they visit in turn throughout each month.

I am still recruiting, and training the leaders and teams in our growing Melaleuca Organisation. I enjoy the balance between the church and the business. Stephanie and I take at least 8 weeks every year to travel. We split our travelling between preaching around the world and personal leisure, rest, and discovery.

The Melaleuca group has grown to more than 5000 customers with hundreds of business builders enjoying good incomes. We have been making such an impact in the battle against climate change and have helped all these families improve the health of their families, the safety of their homes as well as their finances.

True health was always my personal driver and at 175lbs I have as much energy now as I had when I was 45. The supplements we specialise in have been wonderful for me and I am proud to promote them.

Leaving a legacy is important to me and the way the church has grown both numerically and in spiritual maturity is something that gives me and those with whom I shared the oversight immense satisfaction. We took an old run down prefabricated community centre and have completely rebuilt it one section at a time. That was how we never lost the use of it. The renewed facility is a great encouragement for what used to be pretty a poor community. The main auditorium seats 200 and we almost fill it twice each Sunday. Rather than looking for a bigger facility which we think would lose the family atmosphere we have cherished, we are planting another church under 3 miles away in Platt Bridge.

I tipped the scales at 14st 7lb today (July 13th 2016). You may think thats pretty heavy and you are right but only twelve weeks ago I was horrified to see the scales straining and screaming out the news. Sixteen stone-four pounds. Sixty years of age, aching hips and knees and I am thinking how on earth am I going to sort this out?

Last time a calamity of this proportion hit me so hard I was 47. I had slowly crept up to 17 stones that time and now I could see the trend heading the same way.

At 47 I was a lot fitter so I went walking, then jogging and then running. I spent hours in the gym, I did the Atkins diet and set myself goals and targets and awarded prizes to myself on achievement. And it worked, I got down to 12st-10lb in due course. And I stayed that way for several years.

Then a personal crisis hit, there were false accusations in the work place after I discovered a fraudulent transaction.

By the time the investigation were over and a high up official in the company apologised over a video screen from her holiday in Spain and asking could we carry on as normal I was already back on the road to physical ruin.

It me took a long time to get over the extremities of the political correct human resources brigade, I felt it was like Soviet Russia the way they behaved. I tried but trust was broken so I left the role and then the company.

It took a while for me to forgive and stop feeling sorry for myself. This is not good news for the physical body because unforgiveness, resentment and stress all have physical manifestation. That is the only reason I mention it here… because stress causes your body to gain weight and makes it almost impossible to lose it. It really is not totally about diet and exercise. Sleep plays a massive part as does loving yourself the way you are while on the path to where you want to be.

So do YOURSELF a favour: get right with God, love yourself happy and forgive those who have trespassed against you and we are ready to start.

I will write more about the things I have done so far on my road back to 12st 10lb in the coming days. I am just celebrating being half way there. Not with cake though. I stopped eating those except as a treat on Sundays.

For years I have felt it was too difficult to learn new things at my age. I thought the time for learning was past and I was never that good at it anyway. I tried French at school for years and remembered very little so obviously I can’t do languages. I played around with that recorder and the rudiments of music for ages too and could hardly get a tune out of it.

Well now I am thinking a lot differently. I am getting on well with espanol, I am doing OK with guitar lessons and confidence has risen so high that I am even learning to work the internet, yep, building a website and writing blog posts and all that. Long way to go I know but I am going to conquer it.

Maybe one day soon I will post a youtube video of me singing a spanish song while accompanying myself on the guitar. Watch this space.

It seems that my thoughts and comments on today’s Royal Wedding have caused offense to at least one person and so I thought I’d take the time to sit down and write more fully what I believe has happened today. Here is the FB post if you have not seen it. “It was fantastic. The royal wedding allowed the Trinity to be preached to billions. The lusty singing of Jerusalem was just what this country needs. Let’s put the Great back in Great Britain, Father Son and Holy Ghost on the throne and Britannia back on the coinage. If the secular humanists, atheists, anti-royalists and the like are not happy well I am not sorry. I believe in God as I know the Queen does and I believe in the British monarchy as an institution that is respected and honoured all around the world. I believe that this country will truly prosper only when it returns to its Christian roots. The people will follow what the leaders do and as far as I am concerned even if their authority is only symbolic the monarch is the highest spiritual authority in the land. God save the Queen.